I wished I had made it by more blogs during the Ultimate Blog Party last week hosted by 5 minutes for Mom but was just too pooped to party too much and stayed too long at some blog parties to really hop around.

The good thing about the party is that the blog post with all the participants will stay on the 5 minutes for mom website prominently displayed for a few weeks. I hope to do some more blog partying this week.

I did find a few blogs that I will be stopping by for another visit soon.

The happy half baked homemaker won me over on just her name alone. She has a great sense of humor plus a cute little girl that makes me wish mine was that young again.

Also there were quite a few daddy bloggers taking part in the party. One of my favorites is Mocha Dad who posts very insightful commentary. His intro post to the party was quite entertaining and lets you really know the person behind the blog.

There were quite a few new bloggers, too. But really from their posts and blogs they already look like they have this whole blogging thing down pat. Sew Simple Mom has made some of the cutest aprons and clothing. Oh if I only had the patience to sew. Grammy Girlfriend has a fun blog to read and sounds like she has a blessed life with a wonderful husband and some adorable grand kids. She also loves Disney World and says it’s her favorite place on earth.

Those are just a few of the wonderful blogs that I’ve visited this past week of the party. I’m sure I will be visiting more great blogs and will share those as well. If you didn’t make it to the party last week, there is still time to visit literally thousands of blogs. Just go to 5 Minutes for Mom’s Ultimate Blog Party.

On my short wish list is a dishwasher. I get so tired of doing dishes day in and day out. Well let’s be honest here. I may do dishes once a day – on those days that I cook. Until recently we didn’t have a tall refrigerator but was using a dorm sized one. So we drank a lot of can drinks and used very few glasses. So my point is that we weren’t using a lot of dishes. Now that has changed and so I’m back to really wanting a dishwasher.

But my whole point of this post is to not to talk about a dishwasher but to talk about a cleaning product I bought for doing dishes. It’s made by Celo. It’s a scrubbing pad that holds dish liquid soap.

I bought it for two reasons – I thought it was cute and from what I read I gathered it would clean well without having to apply a lot of elbow grease.

So after filling it with soap, I put it to test on my cast iron skillet that had some hard food residue on the bottom. (I should know by now to rinse out pots and pans immediately after cooking) I was excited to see that it worked very well without much force by me.

I’ve had one of these before. It just wasn’t made by Celo. It was so handy between dish washings when you need only to wash a few things.

I was pleased with how well it work because the pad isn’t that abrasive. It works like it says it does and anything that makes doing dishes a little easier, I support 100 percent.

There’s a party going on. I can’t believe the Ultimate Blog Party at 5minutesformom.com almost passed me by. I may be late to the party that started earlier this week but at least I made it.

A little about myself. I’m a housewife who would rather play the Nintendo Wii than do housework. If my mom read my blog about household tips she would probably have a good laugh. Yes, I’m a bad housekeeper. So when I find good and useful tips or products that make running a household easier, I just have to share it.

Here I am from this weekend. We went to the zoo where the sun was really bright.

I look forward to partying and visiting new blogs. There are also a ton of prizes that will be given away during the Ultimate Blog Party. On top of my list that I would love to win is the Kitchen Aid standalone mixer. Besides that there are two Target gift cards up for grabs that would also be divine to win.

This year’s party is bigger and much more expanded than every before. There are dads in attendance as well as live parties and parties on both Twitter and Facebook. It’s so much to take in and all in one week. I look forward to visiting many new-to-me blogs and welcoming those from the party to my humble virtual abode.

Let’s get this party started. Besides sharing household tips, I have shared a few favorite recipes. Here are some that are perfect for parties and therefore perfect for this week.

Sugared Pita Chips

Sausage Balls

Simple Chicken Salad

I’m not sure if I’ve ever talking about ironing. I don’t iron that well, so that is the reason that I’ve never given advice about ironing. However, my husband does iron very well and I’ve actually picked up a few tips from him that has helped me when I absolutely have to iron. This past week I had to iron a few things for a consignment sale and ironed the hubby way. It did make it easier and I got better results.

First I drag out the ironing board. The ironing board makes it so much easier to iron. Before I had an ironing board, I would use a towel over a hard surface like a table. It worked okay but is not nearly as effective as an ironing board.

Next I set my iron to the correct setting and give it a few minutes to come to temperature.

Then I prefer to use starch. I gently spray the garment and then ruffle it together to spread the starch. If I don’t have starch then I use my husband’s favorite – water. We have a spritzer bottle or we even use a damp washcloth to wet the garment.

Then comes the real work – ironing. Try not to leave the iron in one place for too long as you will scorch the clothing. I go back and forth – moving the iron left and right.

I’m still not really good at ironing because it does take patience – which I don’t really have. I have gotten better. It’s like everything else – practice makes perfect.

We have an old green couch that has seen better days. It’s falling apart so we have finally decided that it is time to say goodbye to the couch.

Now we have to find some type of furniture to take its place. What we really want is a comfortable recliner since it will take up less room and give us more space in our living room. Since it’s just the three of us and most evenings we are sitting in front of the computer instead of the TV, we really don’t need a couch. Two recliners should work just fine.

Now for the fun part. Where to take the couch? I hate donating items that are less than comfortable but also don’t want to throw it out to take up space in a landfill. A lot of times you can leave items beside the driveway and someone will stop to pick it up. But since that isn’t a guarantee, I will be donating it and hoping someone will have a use for it.

It does feel good to make more room in our home. We have way too much stuff so getting rid of a clunky couch makes me feel like we are moving in the right direction when it comes to de-cluttering our home.

The birds are singing and the sun is shining. It’s a great first day of spring. Unfortunately, I’m not nearly done with all my spring cleaning. My goal for March is to sort through all of our storage and to de-clutter as much as possible. It’s been spring break here this week so it’s been filled with activities and company. So even though I have done some cleaning this week, I’m still behind on my overall goal especially considering that I have made plans for almost all of next week.

How do you find time to clean especially on glorious days like today? It’s just hard to want to clean when it’s finally pleasant to be outside again. I just need to set my timer and clean in 15 minute intervals. Hopefully I can get a few things done and also enjoy this first day of spring, too.

I have a slow kitchen drain. After taking the flashlight to it, I can see the buildup and it ain’t pretty. I’m just praying that I can find a natural drain cleaner remedy to take care of it.

Right now I’m trying a suggestion I found on GreenYour.com. It says to use a cup of baking soda mixed with 1/4 cup salt. Let it sit for at least an hour or overnight. That’s quite a range. I will probably do at least a few hours since we’ll be without water for a few hours anyway since we are switching to well water. Hopefully it will be long enough to see some results.

Anyone have any home remedies for build up in sinks?

It has been raining here all weekend. While we desperately need the rain, I don’t get much accomplished. All I feel like doing is sleeping and I really can’t do that with a house that is in shambles.

So how can I get motivated to clean when it’s raining? I guess I could look at it this way. I’m not going to get anything done outside of the house. It’s too wet to go to the park or outside. It’s too messy to really go shopping. So all that is really left is to stay inside.

Now that I’ve convinced myself that staying inside is the best course of action, how to get motivated to clean? I guess I could think about the guests we will have next weekend. If I don’t clean, then they will have no where to sleep or even sit for that matter. This week I want to continue rearranging our small living room. This weekend – before the rain begin – we moved out a large piece from the living room and put it in storage. This freed up some valuable living room real estate. Now it’s time to move a few other things around in hopes of getting the most from our small space.

Maybe after my morning caffeine and a little more examining of what needs to be done will be the motivation I need to get going. If not, there’s always tomorrow.

Bath time is always more fun with bubbles. In fact, some evenings it’s the only way to entice the three-year-old to bathe. So when I ran out of bubble bath, I was in a pickle until I could buy some more at the store.

Since I didn’t have any bubble bath, I thought of what I could possibly use around the house instead. When I was a kid, we would use dish washing soap but I didn’t want to go that route since I have it in my head it will dry out her skin. I had some shower gel I had gotten for Christmas so I squeezed a little bit into the tub as it filled with water to see what would happen.

I was impressed by all the bubbles. Hooray! Bath time was saved. Using it this way is great to get rid of half-empty bottles that just seem to be hanging around in the bathroom.

With my share of our tax return money, I bought something that I’ve been wanting for the past year – a sub-mini notebook. Ever since I heard about these babies, I’ve really wanted one but always talked myself out of buying one. After all, I already have a perfectly good PC and laptop. Why do I need another laptop? I finally broke down and bought one. My reasoning was that I wanted something smaller and that was easier to use on the go. I went with the Acer Aspire One. Here it is side by side with my Toshiba laptop.

The keyboard is smaller than my laptop keyboard and does take a little to get used to. The screen is smaller. I had wanted a sub-mini laptop to surf the Internet and for blogging. So for these two tasks, it’s perfect.

I had bought the Acer with the 6 cell battery. It has a battery life of 5 and a half hours compared to 2 1/2 with the 3 cell battery. I sit with my Acer and watch TV. It fits nicely on my lap with plenty of room for the three-year-old when she wants to sit with me. The Acer does get warm but not nearly as warm as my Toshiba seems to get at times. My sub-mini has a 160GB hard drive and has at least two USB ports and an SD memory card slot. The fan almost immediately cuts on when using it and for the most part stays on – making me think I might have to use a cooling pad with the Acer.

The sub mini boots up in less than 1 minute and boots up from standby in less than 10 seconds. This was another reason I wanted one of these. When I have an idea I want to type, every second lost is that idea slipping further away from me.

The size of the Acer Aspire One is awesome. It fits into my purse and with the long battery life means that I can use it almost all day on one charge.

Overall I’m very happy with the Acer Aspire One. I wish I had bought one sooner as I’m seeing a lot of benefits to having a smaller laptop.